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Longmont company rolls out mobile version of its laser maze game

Only (officially) 6 years old, Funovation has shipped nearly 200 of its laser mazes around the world

By Tony KindelspireLongmont Times-Call

Posted:
07/28/2013 12:40:55 PM MDT

Updated:
07/28/2013 12:42:16 PM MDT

Funovation CEO John Bonvallet, left, and CTO Ted Ziemowski show off a laser maze at Funovation on South Sunset Street in Longmont. Funovation, a laser maze and amusement company, started in Boulder in 2007 and moved to Longmont in 2011. The company has laser mazes all over the world.
(
Kai Casey
)

LONGMONT -- Funovation has installed its patented Laser Maze Challenge games all around the world. Now, the company is going mobile.

The Longmont-based firm recently rolled out -- literally -- its new Laser Maze Challenge Trailer unit. The first one is parked at Heritage Square Family Entertainment Village in Golden. The plan is for this to be the first of many mobile units the company builds, according to CEO John "JB" Bonvallet.

"This is mostly for people to do events," Bonvallet said.

"They can take it to parties, they can take it to festivals," added spokeswoman Eileen Stack.

The trailer is a mobile version of the company's Laser Maze Challenge games that have been installed in dozens of countries around the globe in such far-flung places as Kuwait, China, Finland and Latvia. There are nine in Colorado, with the two closest being Fat Cats in Westminster and Loveland Laser Tag.

The game is simple, if not easy: A player goes into a darkened room and tries to make his way through a maze of laser beams while punching certain buttons on the wall. Hitting the buttons and getting out in the quickest time possible while being hit by the lasers the fewest times possible is the goal.

"A low score is best," said Bonvallet. "It's not like bowling."

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At a demo maze the company has set up at its South Sunset Street headquarters, the "easy" setting on the machine has about eight laser beams going across the room, one of them moving. The "expert" level had many more beams.

"The level depends on how many of the lasers are turned on," said Ted Ziemkowski, Funovation's chief technical officer and the man who came up with the idea for the game. He still has the first maze the company ever built in his basement at home.

Devon Clark, design technician, works on steel studs that will become part of the portable walls for laser mazes at Funovation on South Sunset Street.
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Kai Casey
)

"I was helping my friend with his haunted house up in Loveland, and I wanted to create a laser room," said Ziemkowski, talking about his initial idea for the concept in 2005. He envisioned a maze like the one in the movie "Entrapment," where Sean Connery plays a master thief who must work his way through a laser maze to steal valuables.

"The first haunted house earned us enough money to send us to a trade show," Ziemkowski said.

At that show, he reconnected with Bonvallet. The two electrical engineers had known each other from having worked together at IBM years before. Bonvallet, Ziemkowski said, brought a business acumen to the table. By 2007, those two had brought on Erick Mueller to handle sales and marketing and Jason Heddings to run the engineering department. Funovation officially was launched in August of that year.

The company moved to Longmont from Boulder in June 2011.

The Longmont facility's "beam room," where lines of string are strung across at various angles in a structure designed like a typical maze, is where the Funovation team decides where to place the lasers when they build a maze.

"You can't have a maze that's too easy, or it's not fun," said Bonvallet. "You can't have a maze that's impossible, or that's not fun."

Ziemkowski said the mazes are designed with what's called "in-maze configuration," meaning the operators at the amusement centers themselves can adjust the number of beams and buttons it wants to have on for particular level.

"You want to overpopulate it (with lasers) because then you can configure it the way you want it," said Bonvallet.

"You can change it weekly, you can change it monthly," added Ziemkowski. "You can change it if you have a special event coming in."

Funovation has had about 175 mazes installed so far. A "smile counter" in the lobby tracks the number of times the game is played -- a play is a smile -- anywhere in the world. The company averages a smile every 4.7 seconds and is approaching 20 million, said Stack, who wears several hats at the 12-person company.

Sometimes the mazes are made in-house and shipped out ready to be installed -- one such maze destined for Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas was being built in Longmont last week. More common are permanent mazes, where contractors are hired to build the mazes based on specs drawn up at the Longmont headquarters. Funovation does its own hardware and software in-house, but it uses many Longmont-area vendors for a lot of its supplies, including printed circuit boards, Stack said.

The average size of a maze is typically about 12 feet by 20 feet, she said, while the Laser Maze Challenge Trailers are 8 feet by 18 feet.

Mueller handles the company's domestic sales and Funovation typically uses distributors in other countries that specialize in amusement-related products. In countries where no such distribution exists, such as Australia or South America, then Mueller himself will handle sales there, at least until a distributor can be found.

Recently, Bonvallet said, the company started licensing its technology for other companies that want to make the Laser Maze Challenge. It's all in pursuit of the company's vision, he said: "Remind the world to play."

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